Dr. Simon Allmendinger

Postdoctoral Scholar, Novartis, Basel, Switzerland, 2017

Simon was born in the very south western corner in Germany, near the Swiss and French border. After High school he made the step to Switzerland, studying chemistry at the university of Basel, where he completed his master in the lab of Prof. Andreas Pfaltz. For his graduate studies he moved to the most beautiful city in the world – Freiburg im Breisgau. Under the supervision of Prof. Bernhard Breit he focused on the design of novel chiral ligands for the asymmetric hydroformylation. Graduating in late 2014, he settled south, joining the group of Prof. Kilian Muñiz at the ICIQ,  Tarragona, right in the south of Barcelona. Simon arrived in Princeton in October 2015 and is currently working on metallaphotoredox catalyzed C-C coupling reactions.

Fun Facts

• In his spare time he enjoys reading and snowboarding (too bad New Jersey has a slight deficit on mountains).
• When Simon went the first time for a run in Princeton, he got lost in the Institute Woods.
• Simon set foot in at least 32 states of the US, and has probably seen more of the states than he has seen of Europe.
• Simon was pretty excited to find "Rothaus Zäpfle" - the beer he grew up with - in the middle of Princeton (he's kind of a beer snob).